Lesley Walker's Blog

Tag Archives: Bounty

A few weeks ago Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands Society posted on Facebook about a bent bronze sheathing nail that is being offered for sale on eBay for $US5,250. The seller included a 1971 letter of provenance from a staff member of the National Geographic Society who says he recovered the nail at a depth of some 30 feet in 1957 from the bottom of Bounty Bay at Pitcairn Island. The letter states that the “excessively rare” nail “is from the remains of the Bounty” and was used to fasten copper sheathing to the hull below the waterline. To further authenticate the origin of the nail, the writer also states that other larger items on the site were marked with the “Broad Arrow, symbol of British Government ownership”.

When Parkins Christian gave my great grandmother the marlin spike, also marked with the broad arrow, he was trying to save what was left of the Bounty-Pitcairn heritage from just such speculative collecting. He would have been amazed, if not horrified, to think a bent bronze nail was worth more than $5000 because of its possible connection with the famous ship his great-grandfather sailed to Pitcairn Island in 1790. Certainly today it is hoped that the site is protected from ‘Bounty hunters’ although it may not have been in 1957.

For the descendants of the mutineers, the legacy of the events on the Bounty seemed to be difficult to escape. In his 1967 history of the Charles W Morgan, the 1841 whaling ship that I sailed on in 2014 and that Parkins served on for 20 years as First and Second Mate, Edouard A. Stackpole speculated that the reason Parkins never became a whaling ship’s captain was because of the actions of both his great-grandfathers. Everywhere he went, his connection with Fletcher was always part of his story as told by others. The fact that he never told the Bell children might indicate that this wasn’t the way he wanted to define himself. So who was this man who links Pitcairn, Norfolk Islands, the Bounty mutiny, the American, NZ and Australian whaling industry and maritime history, the Charles W Morgan and my ancestors’ life on Sunday (Raoul) Island? Who was this man whose legacies are beautifully crafted wooden and whalebone artefacts, a marlin spike and photograph and the memories and stories others told of him?

The Pitcairners 1857 Norfolk Island. George Parkyn is the small boy on the left (courtesy Norfolk Island Museum)

He was born George Henry Parkin Christian on Pitcairn Island on 16 October, 1853. He was the fifth child and fourth son of Isaac Christian (Fletcher’s grandson) and Miriam Young, the granddaughter of Edward Young. Parkins was the fifth of sixteen children, and the last one to be born on Pitcairn. His next younger brother Reuben Denison Christian was born on the voyage to Norfolk Island on the Morayshire which had left Pitcairn Island on 2 May 1856 carrying 194 people for resettlement on Norfolk Island. A photograph of some of the women settlers taken in 1857 identifies “George Parkyn Christian”, dressed in what appears to be a smock or dress, half-hiding behind Rebecca Evans, his mother Miriam standing at the back among women with the familiar surnames of Nobbs, Young, Quintal and Evans.

No.10 Quality Row. Built in 1844, it became the family home of Isaac and Miriam Christian, George Parkin’s parents, after the Pitcairn Islanders arrived in 1856. It is now the Norfolk Island Museum (courtesy Norfolk Island Museum)

In 1874 he married Augusta Ross Adams who had also been born on Pitcairn, daughter of Jonathan Adams and Phoebe Quintal. Mutineers John Adams, Edward Young, William McCoy, Matthew Quintal and their Tahitian wives were her great grandparents. They had eight children born between 1875 and 1889. His wife died of cancer aged 46 in August 1899. Interestingly, two of the children’s names reflect Parkins’ link with the New Bedford whaling industry and the ships’ captains; this may be a coincidence of course. Howland was born in 1883 (a Howland company had been a past manager of the Charles W Morgan and a James Howland 4th Mate, on the Charles W Morgan, drowned in 1882). His youngest son James Sherman Christian was born in 1889 (Capt. Sherman was captain of the Canton). Parkins served on board the Charles W Morgan for at least 12 of the 14 voyages between 1893 and 1913, mostly as boat steerer or second mate.

From Charles W. Morgan by J.F. Leavitt (Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic Seaport, Connecticut)A photograph of him taken on board either 30th (1904) or 31st (1906) voyage shows a tall, strong, well-built man with an intense gaze.

A photograph of him taken on board either 30th (1904) or 31st (1906) voyage shows a tall, strong, well-built man with an intense gaze.

Bessie and the Bell children were not the only children who hero-worshipped Parkins. Captain Earle’s three year old son Jamie accompanied his parents on the 1902 voyage of the Charles W Morgan and in later life Jamie remembered that he idolized “big George Christian”, second mate, who made toys for him including a small sailing boat on the deck, and spent much of his off-watch time with the boy. How much time he spent with his own 8 children, given his voyaging, is uncertain. While he was away whaling on the Costa Rica Packet in 1890, his 4 year old daughter Mary died of an abdominal tumour.

A first day cover from Norfolk Island 1983

My research into Parkins Christian continues. Establishing an accurate timeline for his peripatetic life has proved challenging and earlier books on the whaling industry are vague and often contradictory. I have him as a seaman on the schooner Ariel (NZ) in 1872 when he saved a young girl from drowning when she fell overboard, the Robert Towns and the Costa Rica Packet (Sydney), the Othello (Hobart and NZ), American whaling barks Cape Horn Pigeon, Canton, California, Charles W Morgan and the schooner A.M. Nicholson and finally the Resolution (Norfolk island). The Royal Humane Society (London) awarded him a silver medallion for bravery following the Ariel rescue when he was just 19. He captained the Resolution at 72. He sailed and whaled throughout the Pacific, the South Indian Ocean, the Japan Seas, the Atlantic, the Ochotsk Sea and the Arctic. There are conflicting sources and stories which add to the confusion. But his will be a story worth the telling.

The Elders – George Parkins is on the right. (Courtesy Norfolk Island Museum).

In the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts, there is a gallery of intricately-carved objects made by whaling men. Among the scrimshawed and carved teeth and bone, needle cases, babies’ rattles, serated pie-cutters, umbrella handles and walking sticks, there is a wooden inlaid jewellery box with a mother-of-pearl heart-shaped key hole, topped with a small reclining dog carved from whale “ivory”.

Detail of the reclining dog carved in “whale ivory” and the inlaid wood. New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford.

Jewellery Box made by Christian on the ship California c1870s-1880s for Captain G.F. Brightman’s wife Lizzie. New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford.

Carved whale tooth attributed to George Parkin Christian. Australian national Maritime Museum

Across the Pacific Ocean in the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, there is a scrimshawed whale tooth signed “Christian” showing a harpooner standing in a whaleboat about to fling his lance at a surfacing sperm whale. Behind these two artefacts is the story of a remarkable man, George Henry Parkin Christian.

The scrimshawed whale tooth signed “Christian” with other whaling artefacts displayed at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.

Much has been written about whaling shipowners, captains and even captain’s wives (who often accompanied them to sea) but much less about whaling ship crew. Master mariner and whaler man, Christian’s life spans three Pacific islands – Pitcairn, Norfolk and Raoul/Sunday, New Zealand, the east and west coasts of America and Greenland and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Three generations of my family knew Parkins, as we called him, and my research aims to reconstruct his challenging and adventurous life, from his birth on Pitcairn Island in 1853 to his death on Norfolk Island in 1940 at the age of 86. So far I have discovered a wealth of new stories and connections and a lot of contradictions and puzzles.

As a child I was intrigued by the long wooden handled metal spike in the mahogany and glass cabinet in my grandparents’ dining room in Sydney, Australia, sitting curiously among pieces of carved ivory, Royal Copenhagen china plates, transparent Belleek cups and saucers, intricate enameled birds, Argentinian silver, miniature Chinese vases and other souvenirs of their travels. The spike looked out of place – rough against their delicacy, practical against their decorativeness, a tool to be held and used rather than displayed. This marlin spike was no souvenir however, but a gift to my great grandmother Bessie Bell and her family from the whalerman my family knew as Parkins Christian. The spike was a tangible link to my island ancestors, whose story ranked alongside Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island and all the adventurous Enid Blyton books I read voraciously as a child.

New Bedford Whaling bark California

Parkins had first met my great grandparents in the late 1870s when he came ashore on Sunday (Raoul) Island in a whaleboat from the New Bedford whaler California. Seventy years later, Bessie recalled the tall, darkly handsome man with the “luminous eyes and rich colouring” of his “Tahitian forebears”. He became the children’s hero and best friend for years to come. The night after the California sailed, Bessie’s father Thomas told them the story of Fletcher Christian, the mutiny on the Bounty and the settlement on Pitcairn Island. Not uncommonly, he muddled the generations, with Fletcher as Parkins’ grandfather rather than great-grandfather. Parkins told the young Bells nothing of this dark chapter in his family history, holding them spellbound instead with stories of the Great White Whale, Moby Dick “that bit whaleboats in half and crunched them to pieces in his awful jaws”.

Parkins visited the island several times in the 1880s, moving from the California to other ships and kept in touch with the family for many years. Bessie remembered his visit on the Costa Rica Packet in the late 1880s “the most famous of the veterans of the early South Pacific whaling fleet still under sail”. With a group of sailors, he loaded the whaleboat with kumaras, yams and other produce to carry to Sydney, their destination port, promising to return the next day for more. But unbeknownst to the Bells ashore, some of the crew mutinied while the ship was still anchored off Sunday Island and Christian was viciously attacked. The ship sailed directly for Sydney and according to Bessie’s memoirs Christian never visited again. He joined the Charles W Morgan when she called at Norfolk Island in 1894 and served as first and second mate almost continuously on the ship until 1913 both out of New Bedford and San Francisco. His last recorded whaling voyage was as First Mate on the New Bedford schooner A.M. Nicolson from 1914-16.

George Henry Parkin Christian or Parkins Christian as my family called him. He gave this photograph to my grandfather.

My grandfather Leslie Dyke, Bessie Bell’s second son. He left New Zealand, where he was born, for Australia in 1928. He is holding the marlin spike, a gift from Parkins Christian.

After that he returned to Norfolk Island where he helped build, then captained the Resolution, a schooner built by the islanders in a bid to trade directly with New Zealand. He was then 72 years old and still described as “of massive build” by a local newspaper. My grandfather Leslie, Bessie’s second son, recalled meeting Parkins in New Zealand. His mother had asked him to return the marlin spike as she believed Parkins had only left it for safe-keeping. Parkins told him to keep it on condition he didn’t sell it to any Bounty treasure hunters! After my grandfather’s death, my mother passed the spike onto me. It is one of my most treasured possessions!